Saturday, May 31, 2014

Aaron Aranza, 37, attacked his daughter while she was having a party at her maternal grandmother's house in Houston, Texas to practice quinceanera dancing. She had chosen a friend, a 15-year-old African-American boy, to dance with her, police said. On learning this, Aranza became angry and stormed outside, where people at the party were gathered, and told them the party was over. He demanded to know if she wanted the boy as her dance partner, using a racial slur to refer to him and saying to his daughter: "Are you serious?" Aranza then pushed the teenage boy, saying: "I don't care that you are a kid." He then took his daughter into the house, hit her with a belt, dragged her and threw her so that she hit her arm on a coffee table.

Villagers found the bodies hours after the two disappeared from fields near their home in Katra village in Uttar Pradesh state, the police superintendent says. The 14- and 15-year-old girls had gone into the fields because there was no toilet in their home. The family belongs to the Dalit community, also called "untouchables" and considered the lowest rung in India's age-old caste system. Hundreds of angry villagers spent the rest of the day in silent protest over alleged police inaction in the case. Indian TV channels showed video of the villagers sitting under the girls' bodies as they swung in the wind, preventing authorities from taking them down from the tree until the suspects were arrested. The villagers accused the chief of the local police station of ignoring a complaint by the girls' father that the girls were missing. The station chief has since been suspended. Police arrested the three men later in the day and were searching for four more suspects.

Officials confirm that his first wife was indeed killed, some six years ago; she was strangled. Iqbal's 20-something son went to police after the killing, and Iqbal spent a number of weeks on the run before being arrested. The son says that his father served a year in jail; police say that he was freed after reaching a "compromise" with his family as allowed by Pakistani law. Iqbal says, "I wanted to send a proposal to Farzana so I killed my wife." The timeline of the events remains a bit murky in terms of when Iqbal met Parveen, with some reports saying that the two were engaged for nearly two years before marrying in January 2014. Iqbal says that the woman's mother died in December 2013, and that her father and brothers then changed their minds about the agreed-upon marriage, preferring that she wed a cousin instead. The two opted to elope on January 7, 2014 and her furious family demanded more money on top of what Iqbal had initially paid in exchange for their lives. Iqbal says that his refusal to pay led to an abduction charge against him, and Parveen was planning to testify when she was attacked outside the court. According to a preliminary police report, her own brothers bashed her head with bricks.

A judge has ordered Arthur E. Morgan III to spend the rest of his life in prison, with no chance of being released on parole, for cutting his baby daughter’s life short at age 2½ by tossing her into a stream to die in 2011. State law dictated that Superior Court Judge Anthony J. Mellaci impose a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole on Morgan for the murder of Tierra Morgan-Glover because the victim was a child — a factor that that would have qualified Morgan for execution before New Jersey abolished the death penalty in 2007. Speaking to Morgan, Mellaci said that if New Jersey still had the death penalty, “you would be candidate No. 1. But the fact that the child was Morgan’s own daughter made the crime that much more unspeakable. And the way he accomplished the killing made it seem even more horrific — he strapped the child into her pink-flowered car seat, tethered a five-pound metal car jack to the seat, threw the contraption into a stream in Shark River Park in Wall and left the crying child to die in the murky water as he drove away to a liquor store.

In 1990, 32% of the population younger than age 20 was minority, increasing to 39% in 2000. By July 2012, 47% of the 82.5 million people under age 20 in the United States were from minority populations. Diversity is increasing because the minority child population is growing, while the non-Hispanic white child population dwindles. There are 7.7 million more minority young people now than in 2000, but 5.7 million fewer white children. From a demographic standpoint, Hispanics are driving rapid increases in diversity among America’s children. In fact, most of the growth in the minority child population between 2000 and 2012 was attributable to Hispanic births. Immigration was an important source of growth in the Hispanic population, but more than 95 percent of Hispanic children under the age of 5 were U.S. born. Indeed, three-fourths of the entire Hispanic population gain between July 2011 and July 2012 came from natural increase — the difference between births and deaths — rather than immigration. Unfortunately, this trend will likely continue. Hispanics are younger, which influences mortality as well as fertility. In 2010 there were 6.6 births for every Hispanic death; in contrast, the ratio was 1.1 and 2.1 births for every death among non-Hispanic whites and blacks, respectively.

Saturday, May 24, 2014

April Jace, 40, died from multiple gunshot wounds, according to preliminary autopsy results. The death was ruled a homicide by the Los Angeles County coroner, Deputy Chief Coroner Ed Winter said. Jace, 51, made his appearance in a Los Angeles courtroom where bail was set at $2 million, and his arraignment was continued until June 18, 2014 at the defense's request. Los Angeles police detectives presented their evidence against Jace, who played a Los Angeles cop in TV's "The Shield." Police found April Jace shot to death in her south Los Angeles home, Det. Lyman Doster said. Michael Jace called 911 to report that his wife had been shot, Det. Dean Vinluan said, adding that he "was on the phone with the operator." Neighbors who heard gunshots also called 911, he said. "At this moment, the motive of the murder is believed to be domestic violence," a police statement said. Investigators detained Jace at the couple's Hyde Park-area home and booked the actor on a homicide charge, according to Doster. Two children were in the home when their mother was shot, Vinluan said. The children were taken to a police station and then handed over to a representative of California's Department of Children and Family Services, he said. A woman described as a close friend of Jace's first wife said in a sworn statement that she witnessed Jace physically abusing his wife in 1997. The declaration was in court records from Jace's 2005 custody case concerning his son with Jennifer Bitterman. Jace "choked and hit" his wife and "slammed her against the wall while (their infant son) screamed in his crib next to her," Maria De Le Vegas said in the sworn declaration. Jace "was raging and out of control, and seeing the extent of his anger was one of the most terrifying things I have ever seen," she said. Jace appeared to be suffering severe financial strain in recent years, according to court documents. The actor filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy in March 2011, citing $500,000 in debts and an annual income of around $80,000 from residuals from his TV and film work, the documents said. Jace had defaulted on the $411,000 mortgage on the south Los Angeles home where his wife died, according to the documents. He married April Jace in June 2003, a year after divorcing his first wife, with whom he shared a son who is now a teen. The FX police drama "The Shield" was the biggest and longest-running role in Jace's 22-year acting career. He appeared in 89 episodes as Julien Lowe, who started as a rookie officer in an inner-city Los Angeles police precinct in 2002 and rose through the ranks to become a detective before the series ended in 2008. He acted on several episodes of "Southland," another TV drama about Los Angeles police, between 2009 and 2012. Jace often played a law enforcement or military officer on television shows. He is credited with roles in "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," "Private Practice," "The Mentalist," "Burn Notice" and "NYPD Blue." He had the title role of Michael Jordan in the 1999 TV movie about the NBA star, "Michael Jordan: An American Hero." Jace played Officer Brown in Russell Crowe's 2009 film "State of Play," and he portrayed a Black Panther member in the 1994 blockbuster movie "Forrest Gump." April Jace had worked for the past year as a financial aid counselor at Biola University, a private school in La Mirada, California, according to the school.

The prominent rabbi, who resigned as leader of Temple Israel in Sharon, engaged in “extensive” browsing of the classified websites Backpage and Craigslist, according to documents related to a search warrant that were released in Stoughton District Court. The rabbi became ensnared in a shakedown scheme when the brother of one boy he communicated with threatened to go public with a sexually-charged email exchange. “I went through theses [sic] e-mails and learned that you lure boys in with the promise of paying them a hundred bucks to let you proform [sic] various sex acts on them,” Nicholas Zemeitus, the brother, wrote in one 2011 email. “That made me so upset and even sick to my stomach.” He threatened to go to the media and added: “I will bring them and post them on the walls of your temple.” Starr resigned recently from his position as the scandal erupted. Authorities are investigating the possibility that the rabbi misused nearly $500,000 in synagogue funds to pay hush money. In an e-mail sent to congregants, Arnie Freedman, Temple Israel president, called the allegations about the rabbi “so painful and deeply upsetting.” She suggested that Starr misled her about the sexual nature of the budding scandal. “At no point during my conversations with the rabbi did he tell me anything as to the nature of his relationship, which seems to be at the heart of all of this,” said Freedman, who referred the matter to attorneys and eventually law enforcement.

Among the 71 people charged in the recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement child porn ring bust, there are more than a handful of surprising offenders, including a Little League coach and a former Westchester police chief. But for those familiar with the Brooklyn ultra-Orthodox Jewish community’s repeated failure to report sexual abuse, seeing Rabbi Samuel Waldman arrested for the possession of child pornography is no shocker. It was Waldman’s own disturbing collection of child pornography, law enforcement officials say, that helped lead them to uncover dozens of other purveyors in “Operation Caireen.” His was one of two initial investigations that eventually led to the announcement of 71 arrests. On March 5, 2014, Waldman, 52, was charged with the transportation and distribution of child pornography. According to a criminal complaint filed in federal court, Waldman shared multiple child pornography files on publicly available peer-to-peer networks out of his home in the Kensington section of Brooklyn. These files included a video of girls “between the ages of approximately four and eleven years of age” performing oral sex and being anally and vaginally penetrated by older men, and a clip of a naked prepubescent boy “being masturbated by another unknown person until the child ejaculates.” At the time, Waldman was a teacher at the all-girls Beth Jacobs Teachers Seminary in Brooklyn. The National Center for Education Statistics says that Beth Jacobs offers ninth- through 12th-grade education. Waldman has been ordered not to engage in any employment with access to children.

Police in the Simiyu region said that the 40-year-old victim was murdered overnight earlier in May 2014 and that the attackers had hacked off her left leg, the index and middle fingers of her left hand and part of her left thumb. People with albinism are often subjected to violent attacks in the African country, where they are known as the “zeru zeru” or ghosts. The condition is heavily stigmatized and families who see it as a curse have known to kick relatives out of their homes. But sufferers are also a target for traditional healers, who harvest body parts to make potions for wealth, success and even election victories. Albinism campaign group Under the Same Sun said that the latest victim was the 73rd person with albinism to be killed in Tanzania since the year 2000 and 67 others have suffered violent attacks during the same period. The group’s founder and chief executive, Peter Ash, said: “The life of yet another person with albinism has been snuffed out. [The woman] was mutilated and violated in the most barbaric way, because of the fatal discrimination people with albinism face in Tanzania. Her screams must rouse the international community to demand the Tanzanian authorities locate and punish her killers to the fullest extent of the law. Anything less is a flagrant miscarriage of justice, perpetuated on the most vulnerable.” The two arrested witchdoctors, a 45-year-old man and 52-year-old woman, were known in the victim’s village and police are also hunting for her boyfriend. Police said that the woman had two children and had sent her eight-year-old daughter to a witch doctor on the day of her murder for herbal medicine to treat her backache. The healer told the girl not to return home to her sick mother because it would stop the “medicine” working and instructed her to stay with her aunt. That night, the woman was murdered and her grossly mutilated body was discovered outside of her home by her niece the next morning. Under the Same Sun is campaigning for better protection for people with albinism in Africa and wants to see witch doctors banned as they claim current regulation is not working. The group is concerned that attacks will increase in the run-up to elections in October 2014, when the demand for potions made from albino body parts is expected to increase.

Friday, May 23, 2014

The savage baseball bat attack left McShane (27) in a wheelchair with impaired communication abilities and Stacy Jurich with permanent health issues, including seizures. Viramontes will serve two consecutive sentences of 25 years for the attempted murder of McShane, 25 years for the attempted murder of Jurich, 20 years for armed robbery, and 20 years for causing great bodily harm. The judge said that a significant sentence is necessary. He was found guilty of the attack in October 2013. Prosecutors asked for a sentence of 120 years in prison. The two friends were attacked under a viaduct as they walked home together after a night out. At the time of the assault McShane was a 23-year-old graduate student attending the University of Illinois. The friends were out celebrating McShane’s internship extension in an area of Chicago popular with young adults. They were walking to Jurich’s apartment at 3 a.m. when they were robbed and attacked. Speaking in court Jurich, who is unable to work, said, "My future, my dreams, my life were permanently altered when this man intentionally hit me in the head with a bat." She continued, “One moment I went from being smiling and laughing to being on my knees in a pool of my own blood.” Sheila McShane, Natasha’s mother, was in Chicago to speak at the hearing. Reading out her victim impact statement she said of her daughter, "She is still alive, but it feels as if we lost her and that's a scar that will never heal. As Natasha's parents, we feel as if we are rearing our 27-year-old daughter all over again." She continued, "One thing is for certain, Natasha will have a life sentence of her own. A life sentence of pain, misery and unfulfillment." She said that McShane’s condition is improving and her daughter has “started to string three of four words together that make sense.” Her mother said that she is also regaining use of her right hand. She lives at her family home in Silverbridge, County Armagh, Ireland and a team of ten people provide care and therapy for her. Her mother said that the team and her family are “trying to get her to be a wee bit independent.” McShane had been studying urban planning before she was attacked. She is now confined to a wheelchair or a walker. Her mother previously said that before the attack her daughter had been an artist and now she draws mere scribbles. Jurich, who managed to raise the alarm on the night of the attack, required more than 15 staples to close the wound in her head. She has seizures, speech problems and partial paralysis due to the head injuries she sustained. She spent three months learning to walk. Testifying in October 2013 Jurich said, "I heard my head being hit and I felt excruciating pain. And I lost my equilibrium. I saw Natasha being hit on the head." She continued, "She was not moving on the ground. The blood started coming out of her head. I took my jacket and supported her head as much as I could. And I ran for help."

Noor Hussein, 75, believed he had the right to discipline 66-year-old Nazar at their apartment in Brooklyn, New York, his defense said. But prosecutors claim that he murdered her because she had made the mistake of cooking him a vegetarian meal made of lentils instead of goat meat. Defense attorney Julie Clark said that Hussein admitted beating his wife but said that in his home country of Pakistan, beating your wife is customary.

Psychologists Tony Greenwald of the University of Washington and Thomas Pettigrew of the University of California, Santa Cruz reviewed studies on discrimination from the last decade and found that prejudice is often rooted in a preference for similar people, rather than in an intent to cause harm to others. They assert that the majority of cases of discrimination in the United States don’t stem from hostile actions like homophobic speech or acts of violence spurred by racist feelings. Instead, unintentional discrimination through favoritism is often the culprit. “This is not to say that prejudice and hostility are not related to outgroup discrimination,” Pettigrew said. “But they are not as central to most discrimination as ingroup favoritism.” So when an employer is considering two candidates—think of one who grew up with a similar background, went to a similar school and is perhaps the same race, compared with another person who has had completely different life experiences—he’s more likely to hire the candidate with whom he identifies. The discrimination against the second candidate is not necessarily intentional or even conscious, it may be because he favors the candidate more like himself not because he dislikes candidate who isn’t like him.

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Spouses tend to be more genetically similar than two people chosen off the street at random, according to a new study. It's likely this is because people who are genetically similar have more opportunities to meet and mate - in other words, "birds of a feather flock together," said lead author Benjamin Domingue, a research associate at the University of Colorado-Boulder's Institute of Behavioral Science. "Genes drive so many things that can structure opportunities and outcomes that determine who we mate," Domingue said. For example, genes may determine whether your potential partner shares your height or weight, or your ethnic background, religion or level of education. Domingue and his colleagues examined the genetics of 825 white heterosexual American married couples, comparing 1.7 million potential points of genetic similarity. The results found that spouses share a significant number of genetic similarities, compared to any two random individuals. This conclusion could end up changing the statistical models scientists use to understand genetic differences between human populations, because such models often assume random mating, the researchers said. Married couples likely have similar genetic traits because their genes helped determine whom they would meet during their lives, Domingue said. "People with more similar genes end up having similar education, which places them in the same social situations and gives them a better chance to mate," he said. People also tend to marry those similar to themselves in terms of race, ethnicity and even body size and shape. Genes may also shape even more subtle biological distinctions that draw people together in ways we don't yet understand, Domingue added.

Friday, May 16, 2014

Baruch Lebovits, 62, answered “Yes” eight times as Brooklyn Supreme Court Judge Mark Dwyer asked him whether he had engaged in oral sex with a teenage boy on eight different occasions in 2004 and 2005. Lebovits was convicted in 2010 of the same charges that he now pleaded guilty to and sentenced to 32 years behind bars before that conviction was overturned in 2012. Prosecutors offered Lebovits a sentence of two to six years in court, but in a sidebar, Dwyer told the attorneys that he would give a sentence of two years if Lebovits pleaded guilty. After accepting Lebovits’ guilty plea, Dwyer said that he arrived at the sentence of two years by checking state records and finding that was the average sentence for defendants with similar charges. The deal gives Lebovits two years in a city jail, but because defendants typically serve just eight months on a one-year jail sentence — and because Lebovits already served 13 months behind bars — he’s expected to do only about three months in a city jail.

Under terms of the settlement, Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and Dave Evans will receive no money. Instead, the city will make a $50,000 grant to the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission. Crystal Mangum, who was hired to perform as a stripper at a March 2006 lacrosse team party, accused the three players of attacking her in a bathroom of the house on North Buchanan Street where the party was held. The trio was later indicted on charges of rape, kidnapping and sexual offense. The case unraveled, however, in the face of Mangum's constantly changing story and a lack of evidence. The Attorney General's Office eventually took over the case, dropped all charges and declared the players innocent victims of then-Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong's tragic rush to accuse. The players sued the city and Nifong in 2007, claiming that the prosecutor and investigators intentionally concealed critical DNA evidence and produced a misleading DNA report. Nifong was subsequently disbarred and jailed for his actions in the Duke lacrosse case. "When Attorney General Roy Cooper announced his decision in April 2007 to dismiss all charges against Mr. Evans, Mr. Seligmann and Mr. Finnerty, and declared them innocent of the charges for which they had been indicted, the city expressed its concurrence in Attorney General Cooper’s decision," the statement reads. "Today, the city reaffirms that it fully concurs with the attorney general’s decision to dismiss the charges and with his conclusion that Mr. Evans, Mr. Seligmann and Mr. Finnerty were innocent of the charges for which they were indicted."

Thursday, May 15, 2014

The decision by the 9th District Court of Appeals didn't provide an opinion about whether the judge's order was appropriate. Instead the appeals court said that it didn't have enough information to decide the merits of the case without a copy of the pre-sentence report detailing Asim Taylor's background. In January 2013, Lorain County Probate Judge James Walther said that Taylor couldn't have more children while he is on probation for five years. The judge said that the order would be lifted if Taylor pays nearly $100,000 in overdue support for his four children.

In New York, Illinois, Maryland and Michigan, more than half of black students attend schools where 90% or more are minority. Around the country, only 23% of black students attended white-majority schools in 2011. Between 1968 and 2011, the number of Hispanic students in the public school system rose 495%, while the number of black students increased by 19% and the number of white students dropped 28%, according to the Education Department.

If Israel is granted visa waiver status, which would enable any Israeli to travel freely to the United States, there will be even more spies for Zion running around than has been the case up until now. In a number of countries, including Canada, legislation is being advanced to make any criticism of Israel punishable as anti-Semitism. In the United States, states are moving ahead with legislation denying government funding to any group that singles out Israel for divestment or boycott because of its policies.

Hernandez, 24, is currently in jail awaiting trial in a separate case: the 2013 slaying of a semipro football player. Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel Conley said that a grand jury returned the indictments in the shooting deaths of Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado. "Mr. de Abreu and Mr. Furtado were ambushed and executed as they drove home along Shawmut Avenue in Boston's South End in the early morning hours of July 16, 2012," Conley said. In addition to the two counts of first-degree murder, Hernandez has also been charged with three counts of armed assault with intent to murder and one count of assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon, the district attorney added. The latter four counts reflect shots fired at three people inside the car that de Abreu and Furtado were in, Conley said. One of the people in the car suffered a gunshot wound, he said. Conley said that Hernandez was driving an SUV that pulled up alongside de Abreu and Furtado's car near the nightclub and that the former football star fired a .38-caliber revolver at them. Hernandez has also been charged with unlawfully carrying the gun that he used in the attack, Conley said.

Meriam Yehya Ibrahim, 27, has been convicted by a Khartoum court of apostasy, or the renunciation of faith. The court considers her to be Muslim. She also was convicted of adultery. According to the rights group Amnesty International, she was convicted of adultery because her marriage to a Christian man was considered void under Sharia law. She was sentenced to 100 lashes for the second crime. She was born to a Sudanese Muslim father and an Ethiopian Orthodox mother. Her father left when she was 6 years old, and Ibrahim was raised by her mother as a Christian. However, because her father was Muslim, the courts considered her to be the same, which would mean that her marriage to a non-Muslim man is void. Sudan is one of the most difficult countries in the world to be a Christian. The country imposes Sharia law on Muslims and non-Muslims alike and punishes acts of "indecency" and "immorality" by floggings and amputations. The Sudanese government has arrested Christians for spreading their faith, razed Christian churches and confiscated Christians' property. Among all religious groups, Christians are the most likely to be persecuted worldwide, according to a 2014 report by the Pew Research Center. Between June 2006 and December 2012, Christians were harassed by governments in 151 countries, Pew reported.

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Rabbi Samuel Hiller, of Far Rockaway, Queens, Ira Kurman, of Hewlett, Roy Hoffmann, of Woodmere, and Daniel Laniado, of Brooklyn, all were scheduled to be arraigned in state Supreme Court in Queens. They were to face a 42-count indictment charging them with grand larceny, identity theft, offering a false instrument for filing and falsifying business records, state Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli and Queens County District Attorney Richard A. Brown said in a joint statement. The foursome, all of whom were connected with the Island Child Development Center in Queens, acted in "brazen disregard for common decency and the law," DiNapoli said. The Island Child Development Center is a nonprofit that serves primarily Orthodox Jewish special-needs children between the ages of 3 and 5. It received $27 million in funding from New York State between 2005 and 2012, when officials first suspected something was wrong. Hiller, 56, used $8 million earmarked for the center to finance religious schools and camps that weren't affiliated with ICDC. He also used $30,000 to pay for plumbing at his house. Kurman, 52, gave out loans totaling $143,000 in center funds to community members who then repaid him with goods and services. Among the services was catering for his daughter's wedding and his son's bar mitzvah. Hoffmann, 50, remodeled his home using $300,000 of the center's money and gave his wife $15,000 for her makeup business. Prosecutors contend Laniado, 41, cashed more than $1 million in ICDC checks. DiNapoli's office caught onto the irregularities in 2012 when Kurman, the center's former executive director, fled with the center's books shortly before a routine state audit. Hiller has been identified as ICDC's assistant director, Hoffmann as its auditor and Laniado as an "investor" in the center. Each defendant faces 25 years in prison if convicted. The DA's officials also has sought repayment of more than $11.4 million. A camp and school associated with Hiller already have repaid close to $1 million.

The highest concentration of anti-Semitic attitudes was found in the Middle East and North Africa, the survey showed, led by the West Bank and Gaza, where 93% of respondents held such views, followed by Iraq at 92%, Yemen at 88% and Algeria at 87%. The areas where anti-Semitic attitudes were least prevalent were Oceania, the Americas and Asia. In Laos, less than 1% of the population held such views, the lowest anywhere, the survey said. In Europe, the survey showed Greece to be the most anti-Semitic country, at 69%, and Sweden the least, at 4%. In the United States, the survey found 9% of respondents anti-Semitic. The most widely held stereotype, the survey showed, was an affirmative answer to this statement: “Jews are more loyal to Israel than to this country/the countries they live in.”

The incidence of cervical cancer for women ages 65-69 was 27.4 cases per 100,000 women, 84% higher than the uncorrected rate of 14.8 cases per 100,000 women. Among white women ages 65-69, the rate was 24.7 cases per 100,000, compared with an uncorrected rate of 13.5 cases per 100,000. The rate for African-American women ages 65-69 was 53 cases per 100,000, compared with an uncorrected rate of 23.5 cases per 100,000. In fact, African-American women had higher cancer rates at nearly all ages compared with white women, and the disparity was more pronounced at older ages, likely attributable to African-American women reporting a higher prevalence of hysterectomy than white women.

Sunday, May 11, 2014

Now U.S. intelligence officials are saying — albeit very quietly, behind closed doors on Capitol Hill — that our Israeli “friends” have gone too far with their spying operations here. According to classified briefings on legislation that would lower visa restrictions on Israeli citizens, Jerusalem’s efforts to steal U.S. secrets under the cover of trade missions and joint defense technology contracts have “crossed red lines.” Israel’s espionage activities in America are unrivaled and unseemly, counterspies have told members of the House Judiciary and Foreign Affairs committees, going far beyond activities by other close allies, such as Germany, France, Britain and Japan. A congressional staffer familiar with a briefing in January 2014 called the testimony “very sobering…alarming…even terrifying.” Another staffer called it “damaging.” The Jewish state’s primary target: America’s industrial and technical secrets. “No other country close to the United States continues to cross the line on espionage like the Israelis do,” said a former congressional staffer who attended another classified briefing in late 2013, one of several in recent months given by officials from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the State Department, the FBI and the National Counterintelligence Directorate.

Dr Jaishri Namdeo, 29, was standing with her husband-to-be on a stage, in the city of Bhopal, when Anurag Singh stormed up the aisle and shot her at point blank range. Anurag, who had entered the wedding disguised as a photographer, then attempted to shoot himself but missed and grazed a nearby guest, allowing witnesses to tackle him to the ground. They then disarmed the shooter and beat him violently until police arrived. Dr Namdeo, a pediatrician, died later in hospital from a single wound to the neck. Her husband, Rohit Namdeo, a surgeon, survived the attack.

More and more, the face of HIV in the United States is that of the young, black gay man. Despite comprising only 13% of the U.S. population, African-Americans account for 44% of new HIV infection nationwide. Starkly stated, black gay men are three times as likely to become infected as white gay men.

Briscoe, of Clapham, South London, was found guilty of trying to pervert the course of justice in connection with the investigation into how disgraced cabinet minister Huhne passed speeding points to his then-wife Vicky Pryce a decade ago.
Jailing her, Justice Baker told Briscoe that if she and Pryce shared anything in common it was "arrogance by educated individuals who considered respect for the law was for others." The 56-year-old had been suspended since her arrest in October 2012 and could now be barred from sitting as a judge.

That percentage is more than three times lower for white male high school dropouts. By the age of 14, a child born to a black father who dropped out of high school has a 50% chance of having a dad in prison. Less than 10% of white fathers without a diploma wind up in prison, the study shows.

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Up to a third of the population of Britain will be black or from another ethnic minority by 2050. The BME (black and minority ethnic) population has doubled in the past decade and now accounts for 80% of growth while the white population has remained constant. While ethnic minorities make up just 5% of the over-60s, they account for a quarter of under fives. The five largest minority groups in Britain are Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, black Africans and black Caribbeans.

The uncle had raped another girl in the village, according to tribal elders. Following tribal custom prevalent in parts of Pakistan, the elders gave Amna and her 17-year-old cousin, Zulhaj, to that girl's family. Nobody asked their opinion. Such "compensation marriages" are technically illegal under Pakistani law. But in a country with fraying central authority, the formal judicial system with its slow, corrupt course is often abandoned in favor of traditional tribal justice. With little faith in the courts, the practice of "swara"—giving away women as punishment for their families—remains an option for settling village disputes in tribal areas dominated by the Pashtun ethnic group in Pakistan's northwest. It also remains prevalent in the tribal-dominated parts of Baluchistan and Punjab provinces. In Pakistani courts, criminal cases can take up to five years to resolve while civil cases take up to a decade. The two girls, from a remote corner of northwest Pakistan, were both married to the brother of the raped girl, who is in his mid-30s. Within Pashtun tribal culture and under Islamic law, men can marry multiple wives.

"I abducted your girls. I will sell them in the market, by Allah," a man claiming to be Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau said in a video. "There is a market for selling humans. Allah says I should sell. He commands me to sell. I will sell women. I sell women," he continued, according to a translation from the local Hausa language. Boko Haram is a terrorist group receiving training from al Qaeda affiliates, according to U.S. officials. Its name means "Western education is sin." In his nearly hour-long, rambling video, Shekau repeatedly called for Western education to end. "Girls, you should go and get married," he said.

Sunday, May 4, 2014

Michael Setiawan was arrested after police received a 911 call about swastikas and other anti-Semitic vandalism. The 36-year-old faces charges of criminal mischief as a hate crime and aggravated harassment. The spray-painted words were found on 15 vehicles and four buildings near the Bnos Zion synagogue and school run by the ultra-Orthodox Bobov community. A break in the case came when a young boy saw the suspect tagging a car and took down his license plate number as he drove away. Police say that Setiawan was an officer in the New York City Police Department until 2007, serving in Brooklyn’s 69th precinct in the Canarsie neighborhood. He resigned him from this position, police said. Michael Setiawan was 12 when he and his family emigrated from Jakarta, Indonesia, in 1989 after winning the green card lottery.

Jacob Zuma has promised to speed up the shift of power from white to black South Africans as the ruling Africa National Congress party made its final bid to remain in power for a fifth term. Addressing concerns that many black South Africans still live in poverty 20 years after the end of apartheid, Zuma said that it would be a “key priority” to give them control of more businesses and accelerate land reform. In other words, Zuma wants to help blacks get out of poverty by stealing wealth from the whites who created it in the first place.

Friday, May 2, 2014

This new law is meant to stop Swedish people from complaining about their country being turned into a third world nation. Without freedom of speech there can be no democracy. If you are not allowed to say certain things then parties that support your ideas cannot exist and Sweden is at high risk of turning into a communist Soviet-style nation. Dissenters will be jailed: this is the outcome of leftist "tolerance". They're turning the country over to foreigners and their progeny, and if you dare complain, it's the Gulag for you.

Timothy Frederick Knight, 53, of San Francisco, a convicted car thief, was arrested on suspicion of possessing a stolen car in Daly City. He was released on $50,000 bond and was ordered to appear for a preliminary hearing on April 3, 2014. Trouble was, he had no car to get to the San Mateo County Superior Court branch in South San Francisco. So on April 2, Knight stole a Honda Accord in Daly City, according to District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe. Police found it parked on a street, and members of the county’s Vehicle Theft Task Force secretly placed a tracker on the car. On the day of the court hearing, Knight drove the stolen car to court, Wagstaffe said. The case was continued, and Knight got back into the car and drove away, prompting police to arrest him, authorities said. They discovered that the Honda’s ignition had been punched with a screwdriver that was still on the floorboard, Wagstaffe said. Knight is being held at County Jail in lieu of $165,000 bail.

Islamic militants seized about 230 girls in the dead of the night at a high school in the nation's far northeast, a hotbed for Islamist group Boko Haram. Armed men herded the girls out of bed and forced them into trucks on April 16, 2014 in the town of Chibok. The convoy of trucks then disappeared into the dense forest bordering Cameroon. Roughly 200 girls are still missing. Boko Haram's name translates to "Western education is a sin" in the local language. The group especially opposes the education of women. Under its version of Sharia law, women should be at home raising children and looking after their husbands, not at school learning to read and write. Rights groups say that the militants kidnap girls to perform chores and sexual services.

The Islamic criminal law is set to include punishments such as flogging, dismemberment and death by stoning for crimes such as rape, adultery and sodomy. The religious laws will operate alongside the existing civil penal code. Most parts of the new Islamic code will apply to both Muslims and non-Muslims, affecting people from the Christian and Buddhist communities. Around 70% of people in Brunei are Malay Muslims, while the remainder of the population are of Chinese or other ethnic descent. The Sultan, who is also the Prime Minister, first announced the law in October 2013. As per its provisions, sexual offenses such as rape, adultery and sodomy will be considered punishable acts for Muslims. Consensual sex between homosexuals will also be criminalized, with death by stoning the prescribed punishment.